DATE : 7.28.2010
SUBJECT : War

Michael Burleigh has written an informative in-depth piece in the Telegraph newspaper of London, outlining the double game Pakistan has been playing with regard to the Taliban, al-Qaeda, other extremists, terrorism, and the impact on both the war in Afghanistan and on Pakistan itself. The complexity of the situation has required the NATO allies to play their own double game, as Burleigh also notes. "Although Pakistani collusion with terrorists is a deplorable fact of life for Western forces fighting the Afghan Taliban, we have a simultaneous dependence on Pakistan's tacit collusion in aerial drone strikes on al-Qaeda and Taliban leaders. This has ensured that it was David Cameron, speaking in Bangalore on his trip to India, who criticised Pakistan's 'export of terror', rather than Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. He was right to do so." Burleigh describes Pakistan as the most dangerous source of international terrorism, while at the same time one of the worst victims of terrorism, illustrating the divide between civilian, military and intelligence agencies playing different sides (in some respects in real power-struggles representing different interests, and in other respects playing different roles in a strategic game), as Pakistan fears the influence of its enemy India (which it had historically been a part of and which both have nuclear weapons), and the situation it will be left in when and if the US and NATO leave the region, in terms of being a serious presence. Burleigh concludes that regardless of the reasons for Pakistan's choices, it will not be able to play both sides forever. And he boils down the questions for the US, UK and NATO to the following two most important ones in terms of impact on and resulting from, Pakistan's actions: "Two questions present themselves. Are enough conditions being attached to that $1 billion a year that the West disburses on Islamabad? And what contingency planning is there should the feeble, nuclear-armed, Pakistani state succumb to the incubuses its own elites have played such a deplorable role in creating?" It might be added that it seems recently that Pakistan became more serious and made progress in waging war on extremists on its own soil, mainly with US help, at the point it appeared Pakistan and its nuclear weapons might actually fall under Taliban control, which may be forcing choices, but which will require serious long-term US and western commitment to Pakistan to create a positive outcome. Further, historically, the people of Pakistan have mainly been poor, hungry, landless peasants who are a breeding ground for extremism, and therefore, how western aid actually does, or does not help them, and the associated needed major reforms in Pakistan itself, will be pivotal.